After sitting on this episode for the better part of a day, I’d like to say I’ve come up with some brilliant theory to explain how the story of Mary and her lambs ties in with the Takakuras, but I’m still lacking enough information to formulate an idea that I’m even convinced about.

Hey all, I’m verdant and I’ll be the “main” writer who will be guest blogging Persona 4 the ANIMATION along with unlisted. Earlier this summer, he piqued my interest in the upcoming anime adaptation of Persona 4, so once classes finished, I decided to play both the Persona 3 and 4 games (a daunting task, but someone had to do it). Fortunately, my dedication paid off when a couple weeks later, unlisted tells me that Divine is looking for someone familiar with the game to cover Persona 4. Challenge accepted.

Compared to most people, my introduction to anime is probably quite unique since my dad was the one who introduced me. He would peruse the kids’ animation section of our local library and bring home shows like Fushigi Yûgi and Revolutionary Girl Utena, even though he never watched anime himself. Being young, I probably didn’t fully understand what I was watching, but nevertheless, what stood out was seeing the stories, themes, and action that couldn’t be found in my usual Western cartoons. I was starting to get hooked, and once I discovered Escaflowne on Fox, Dragon Ball Z on Toonami, and that my best friend also secretly liked anime, there was no looking back. We even dabbled in some drifting thanks to Initial D (please don’t try this at home).

I’ll try to refrain from telling you my favorites since you can get that from MyAnimeList. Instead, I’ll try to explain what my list can’t: how I got into anime.

I’ve seen or been exposed to shows like Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Sailor Moon and Gundam. (None of them except for the original Pokemon are on my anime list since I can’t tell you how many episodes of I’ve seen of each.) But it wasn’t until late 2006 when I started watching seriously. This was when I got into Bleach which was airing dubs on late night television. I then followed up with another of the big 3 shounen Naruto. Soon after I watched Hayate no Gotoku and loved it. This is where I steadily branched out into the anime scene.

Shinryaku!? Ika Musume has already premiered and the flood of new fall shows is going to follow suit this Saturday, so here’s a quick overview of what the other writers and I will be covering this season.

As usual, this schedule is tentative and we’ll cover the first episode of some other shows that we plan to check out. If something catches our interest, shows might be shifted around and this schedule will be updated to reflect any changes.

It’s great that season three ended with what I think even the harshest critic would call a superb episode. But it’s as if the gang at Brains Base had a direct line to my brain, because they used a story for the finale that tackled all the issues I’ve been kvetching about all season head-on.

It takes something special to give a series a good ending episode — especially for series longer than one-cour and this last episode of Nichijou didn’t just push the envelope. It stared at that envelope, ripped it in half, ate the pieces, and then lit itself on fire in order to make sure that there was no trace of an envelope.

It’s pretty easy to see what cards everyone is holding as we get set for next week’s anime-only finale of Ao no Exorcist, but there’s still a wild card – or perhaps it’s a joker – that’s yet to be played. And I suspect that as he goes, so goes the battle.

「君と僕と彼女のこと」 (Kimi to Boku to Kanojo no Koto)
“You, Me, and For Her Sake”

I don’t know what the point of luring out your enemies is if you don’t fully intend to have fun with it. When Hakamizaka was threatening to “fly away” if Narumi wasn’t fast enough to catch him, I didn’t expect him to be flying away on drugs.